Pyrolysis Process and Characteristics of Products from Sawdust Briquettes

The pyrolysis of briquettes made from biomass is an available and economic technological route for the production of briquette charcoal, but by-products (tar and gas) cannot be brought into full utilization, leading to the waste of resources and the addition of environmental concerns. Temperature is the most important parameter that affects the distributions and properties of briquette charcoal. This work investigated the three kinds of products of the pyrolysis of sawdust briquette in a fixed bed across a wide temperature range (250 to 950 °C). The purpose of this experiment was to study the pyrolysis process and the properties of the resulting products (briquette charcoal, liquid, and gas) of sawdust briquettes and explore the optimum operating temperature to generate good quality briquette charcoal, liquid, and gaseous products simultaneously. According to the results, the optimum pyrolysis temperature range was 450 to 650 °C, for which the briquette charcoal produced within this range had the highest calorific value (2,9.14 to 30.21 MJ/kg). Meanwhile, the liquid product is considered to be useful for liquid fuels or valuable chemical materials, and the low heating value of the gaseous product was 11.79 to 14.85 MJ/Nm in this temperature range.